


None May Challenge the Brotherhood

by voksen



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Future Fic, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:30:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three conversations Edwin VanCleef and Mathias Shaw never had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	None May Challenge the Brotherhood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunealyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/gifts).



> In three AUs that might have happened: a world where PCs capture VanCleef instead of killing him, a world where the Defias take Stormwind, and a world where the Stonemasons never quite rioted.

1.

The Stockade smells of old blood, a blunt metallic scent soaked indelibly into the stone and mortar, deeper than bleach and scrubbing could clean. It sets Mathias' nerves on edge - not only on instinct but because he knows, despite Thelwater's continued prevarications and stream of false reports, whose blood had been spilled and why.

"As you can see, Master Shaw," the Warden says, gesturing with a too-wide smile at the doors to either side of the central passageway and the clusters of armed guards outside each, "We've tripled the security. We're taking every precaution."

The bars are new, but not too new, Mathias notes. Replaced after the riot but not since then; that's a point of weakness, if Thelwater's been keeping Defias agents and engineers in them still. He'll have to send someone in to inspect them, to be sure... when he can. This whole damn plan of keeping him here - in a prison he'd designed and built - is a weakness, when it comes to it, but there's nothing Mathias can do about that.

It's not the first time politics have tied his hands when it comes to national security and Edwin VanCleef, he thinks with a certain amount of grim humor. The barb stings deeper yet because it's just the sort of thing VanCleef himself might have found funny, once upon a time; the kind of thing he might have said in that half-joking way of his, a smile on his lips and a dangerous earnestness in his eyes.

"Every precaution," he echoes blandly. The Warden takes it as agreement and relaxes minutely into self-satisfied calm, his stride lengthening a bit, chest puffing out as he leads Mathias down the corridor and into the wide room at the end.

"The other cells in this wing have been emptied, of course," Thelwater says. "We aren't risking any messages being passed. No conspiracies here."

They're building a fence of straw between themselves and the wolf and feeling pleased about it. "I expected nothing less," he says, letting the polite fiction stand. The door to their left has another squad of guards outside it, ten or so soldiers in full arms and armor. "But I'll want to speak with him alone."

Thelwater blinks at him stupidly. "For interrogation, you mean? But there's no need for a confession--"

"Warden," he says. "Please." It is not a request.

After a thankfully small amount of hemming and hawing, they part the guards and Thelwater opens the thick-banded iron door; Mathias steps in alone. He hears the door clang shut behind him, but his attention is all on the slight man chained to the back wall by wrists and ankles, in the cell within-a-cell.

VanCleef does not look up as he walks up to the bars between them; it gives Mathias time to get a good long look at him, better than the quick glimpse he'd had while they were bundling him shackled and unconscious into the Stockades the night before. He's thinner than Mathias remembers from better days, like drawn wire; the prison clothes hang too loose on him, but Mathias can see lean muscle in the inch or so of wrist, in the shape of his shoulders beneath the baggy cloth. His hair is long; unbound (at least Thelwater had the sense to take the leather tie from him), it hangs in limp matted tangles over his face, hiding his eyes - until, finally, as Mathias reaches out and touches the iron, he looks up.

"Shaw," he says, his voice hoarse.

A stubbly beard hides his throat, but by the sounds of it Mathias places the bruise of a garotte beneath the shadow. He wishes he hadn't; it makes it all too easy to imagine the noose that will follow it soon enough. "VanCleef," he returns.

They watch each other in thick, tense silence. Mathias does not say _I never wanted it to come to this_ and VanCleef does not say _It was always going to come to this; the only question was to who would be on which side of the bars._ It has been a decade but some things have not changed and they do not need the words: they can still speak with glances as they had when they had last played at roof-walking.

But VanCleef has never had much patience for silence and waiting; Mathias can see it running out like sand behind his eyes. "When's it going to be?" he asks finally.

Mathias sorts through a dozen answers in an instant and settles on "Soon," which is both something that is true and something that is not giving away vital intelligence.

VanCleef scoffs at him, spits on the floor. It doesn't cross half the cell - Mathias would be surprised if they'd given him water since they'd chained him there - but the gesture is clear enough.

"You didn't tell me so much back then," Mathias says. His words kindle a spark in those flat eyes and for a split second Mathias sees his friend in the shadow of the murderer - and then it's gone just as quickly.

"Why should I have? They already had you bought and paid for."

"It was never about money--"

"For you," VanCleef says. "Because you never went without it. You never knew what it was like to go without. You never watched your friends, your men turned out on the streets, because for _you_ they always had money. If you'd been hungry a day--"

"That was ten years ago. You--"

VanCleef laughs, a sharp bark that rings discordantly with Mathias' memories. "I don't _forget_. This is our city, Shaw, not yours. Our work. Our blood." Mathias twitches almost undetectably at the word, as the lingering stench in the air seems to double, and VanCleef laughs again. "Tell me," he says, "about the King's _justice_. Will it be a show trial for me, or a knife in the dark, like Thredd, for lack of evidence? Yes, I know about that. Of course I know. That's the problem with mercenaries, their blades cut both ways."

"They do," Mathias agrees. "As you've seen."

The chains clank dully as VanCleef shifts under them. To anyone else it might look aimless, a slight adjustment to find some small comfort, but Mathias knows him, knows his body, knows how he moves beneath rope and chain and how he tests them for weakness. He keeps his mouth shut and flips through his mental roster for agents who might be dispatched to strengthen Thelwater's too-lax security.

"It's ironic, isn't it," VanCleef says. "That in the end it was the King's money and not the King's men. For him - and for me. All your hard work useless in the face of a handful of silver."

He could say the same; he might have, once, in a world when that joke would have been made with humor and not with bile; they might have teased each other. "Yes," he says instead, because he owes Edwin's memory enough not to kick a dead man. "I'll do what I can to see that it's quick and fair."

VanCleef bares his teeth in an expression that has almost nothing in common with a smile. "You've said that to me before," he snarls, which is not quite the truth but closer to it than strictly comfortable. "Take your promises and leave me be. I don't negotiate with traitors."

Mathias looks him over one last time, fixing him in memory: an illustration of the price of not watching the friends at one's back closely enough - and, yes, of not weighing their grievances as seriously as they were felt. "All right," he says at last, and turns to go.

He's already halfway to Old Town with the new schedule fixed in his mind - he'll need to shift some people away from Westfall, but better to guard the head of the snake than the body - when the alarm rings out. He pauses, torn, half-tempted to turn and follow the sudden rush of guards back to the prison, but instead continues quickly not to SI:7 but to Cathedral Square.

Taking the stairs two at a time, he hammers on the door at the top until it opens just a crack, revealing a squirrely face even tighter and more nervous than usual, eyes squinted with fear and worry. "Baros," Mathias says. "The blueprints for the Stockades - and the Keep. Where are they?"

"I," he says. "I don't - I didn't - It wasn't me --"

" _Baros._ "

"I don't know."

 

2.

They're caught up just as they cross into the Dwarven District by a band of at least thirty, led by a huge jet-black tauren. Relief melts into sick weariness; anticipation into dull acceptance. "Go," Mathias says under his breath; Osborne, good man that he is, doesn't hesitate at the command but slashes the ends of his reins at the rump of the Prince's horse and sends his own racing after it.

Sloane stays at his side as the Defias bear down - there's enough time for a smile between them and then they're fighting not for their lives or for victory but for time, defensive maneuvers laid on one after another in increasingly dangerous strategies. Every minute is precious: if Osborne can reach the tram, if they can get Anduin safely to Ironforge --

The tauren bellows in anger and pain, stomping at the earth so hard that Mathias barely keeps his feet though he's yards away. Sloane, caught closer, screams: a harsh desperate sound that fades too quickly into a gurgle. Mathias hamstrings a mage and spins away, swords in hand, backing up to get a better look. Sloane's dead or dying on the ground, together with some half the Defias. If he were fresh, he might stand a chance. He's been fighting and running all day.

"Well then," he says, and raises his blades in salute.

It doesn't last long. Longer than he'd expected - but not long. It's the mages who take him down at last, hammering at him with frostbolts while he does his best to keep the other rogues off him, to evade the lumbering tree-trunk blows of the big tauren; they slow his feet, numbing him until finally he makes a parry, tries to sidestep a second blow, and the world falls from beneath him into darkness.

 

Mathias did not expect to wake, but wake he does - on his knees and in chains, which is not surprising, and in the throne room, which rather is. He shakes the dull wooziness from his head and looks around; he's surrounded by corpses, guards with broken armor and bloodied assassins. When he turns his gaze to the throne he half expects to see Edwin VanCleef lounging on it, feet up, eyes blazing - but it stands empty. He straightens a bit; the clank of his chains brings a watchful thief from the shadows of an alcove, throwing-knife balanced in her hand. Most of her face is hidden by a red mask, but her eyes look sharp and wary. Mathias smiles pleasantly and stays still.

While he waits he takes a silent catalog of himself: his legs still feel half-frozen and numb, there's the sharp, pulling feel of a half-healed wound across his back and the ache of recently-crushed bone at his side. They'd gone to some effort to heal him, it seems; that says they know he's valuable. His presence _here_ says they know exactly who he is, which means VanCleef has already seen him; VanCleef alive in the Keep means the Regent is either captured or dead. The pins up his sleeve have been found and removed; he manages to shift his feet slightly without being terribly obvious - and the daggers in his boots and trousers are gone too. Things have definitely looked better.

At the sound of a clatter from the hall both he and his guard look up in time to see VanCleef enter, flanked by the the tauren, his hooves ringing loud on the stone, and another masked human. VanCleef's eyes flick about the room before settling on him; it's a wariness that's not echoed in the silken smug tones of his voice. "Mathias, old friend," he says. "I've come to collect a debt."

The man at his side snickers loudly, echoed by the tauren, and Mathias only just catches a tightness in VanCleef's expression. It's a tiny weakness, but it's there, and he leaps on it like a starving tabby on a deeprun rat, holding the knowledge close.

In the next moment VanCleef is stalking towards him with a strange notched blade naked in his hand and his eyes curiously blank. Mathias knows he's still worth more alive than dead, but that only goes so far. He keeps his face calm anyway, looking up into VanCleef's as he comes nearer, as the blunt flat hooks under his chin. They watch each other for a long moment before VanCleef glances back over his shoulder at the three behind him.

"Thredd," he says, "You and du'Paige see what you can find in SI:7. Smite, I want you overseeing the blockade. Go."

They snap to attention faster than Mathias had really expected from a group as motley as the Defias and are gone just as quickly. He watches them; when the tip of the tufted tail vanishes around the corner he turns his eyes back to VanCleef and finds him watching already.

"You'll never stop underestimating me, will you, Matty?" VanCleef says. There's a sneer in the words that's all the colder for not showing on his lips. "But look what we've done. We'll have what's ours, with interest - and we'll see that the people get theirs... and that you get yours." The notch in the blade nicks at his throat as VanCleef shifts it against his neck; it's sharp enough that it doesn't hurt when it sends a few droplets of blood tickling down his throat. He wants to swallow; he doesn't.

He knows what VanCleef wants; not just the money but the recognition: fame, once - infamy, now. It seems inevitable that he'll get it, even if Osborne and Anduin reach Ironforge safely, even if the dwarves come to their aid. He has no illusions about his own eventual fate; over the last few years the Defias have shown themselves capable of far worse than a little torture. "And what," he says, opening the scratch wider as he speaks so that the droplets turn to a stream, "what do the people get?"

The sword draws back from his neck, the sharp edge scraping across the blood at his neck like a razor, lifting it clean away and leaving his skin stinging. "What they deserve," VanCleef says finally, wiping his sword clean on the leather of Mathias' pauldron and sheathing it. "Pay for their work. A say in how they're governed. A voice equal to those with more money and less sense. Vengeance against the people who have wronged them and gone unpunished."

"And if they don't want vengeance for the slights you're inventing for them any more than they did ten years ago?" Mathias says. He matches VanCleef's earlier sneer; if his former friend has fallen so far into grudges and hatred as all the intelligence of the last decade has suggested, Matthias may be able to provoke him into killing him early, into letting SI:7's secrets die with him.

His jab strikes home; VanCleef's mouth thins, his fingers curl - but he does not take the bait entirely, does not lash out as Mathias had hoped. "Then they'll learn better soon enough. You're not so different from them in that." He comes a step nearer, reaches down and sets his gloved fingers on Mathias' chin, sliding them down his bloodied neck, cupping his face in a terrible parody of the past. "And I have friends who are very good at helping people realize the truth."

 

3.

"I need the Keep bugged."

"I'm surprised you're asking me," Edwin says, though not a flicker of the surprise he claims shows on his face or in his voice. He's leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed loosely; a deliberately casual posture to match the plain workman's clothes he's wearing. If Edwin's fingers fall a bit too low, too close to the imagined hilts of the swords he's not wearing, well - he hasn't worn them publicly for a while and most likely only he and Baros would recognize the stance from days past.

He might have made a spy after all, Mathias thinks, but says instead: "Are you really?"

"I am unless it's worse than you're letting on," Edwin says. "Have you lost half your stable, or only half your mind?"

"Half my trust," Mathias says. "I can't let this get out."

"No? And you don't trust your own people for the job, and you're calling in a very interesting old favor. If I didn't know you better, Matty, I might start to suspect you of treason."

It's a dangerous, double-edged joke between the pair of them. "Then it's a good thing we do know each other," he returns blandly. "And it's a good thing I have that favor to hold."

Edwin tilts his head back and watches him in silence for a few moments, but the inn bed is comfortable enough beneath him and Mathias has been pinned by worse glares than this and in the end Edwin breaks first, as he always has. "I suppose it's your own business what oaths you break with it," he says, though there's a dark glint in his eye that leaves Mathias wary and wondering.

"None that you need to worry about, at any rate," he says. "I'm not asking you to betray King and country."

"Only spy on them."

Mathias spreads his hands openly, innocently, and shrugs. "I asked you to incite no _direct_ action against them. If you leave a few trinkets here and there, where they won't be noticed, well, that's hardly direct."

Edwin pushes off the wall and crosses the room. His arms fall to his sides as he moves and Mathias remembers even more vividly the way he had once moved with blades in hand, the stalking, barely-contained fury of it; he has to keep his breathing consciously even. It has been too long since he'd dared risk more than casual, aboveboard contact; too many things have fallen buried in the past.

He stops in front of the bed, looking down; the dark look joined by an unhidden, calculating consideration. "If you were considering treason," he says.

"Edwin," Mathias says. "You got what you were due."

"And no more," Edwin says. It is an old argument, but one they have rarely had the chance to take up lately - one they rarely have had in so many words at all. He reaches down, sets a hand on Mathias' shoulder, long clever fingers splaying out over his pauldron. "And after too much work and too many promises."

It's harder to feign indifference with Edwin touching him. He doesn't think that is the only reason why Edwin is doing it, but he suspects it is one of them. Two can play at that game, however, and, still seated, he rests his hand on Edwin's hip, as lightly as if he'd intended to pick his pocket. "But you did get it."

Edwin's hand slides across the leather gently enough that Mathias only feels a ghost of pressure. "Would you tell me?" he says, and then those scratched, calloused fingertips are at his neck, feathering over his pulse, feeling the quick beat. "Would you come to me for that?"

This is a dangerous game, but what he's asking of Edwin is, he suspects, no less dangerous and possibly far more so - and yet he must have it done, and Edwin with his architect's knowledge and master engineer's skills is the only one who can manage it without detectable magic. He has no choice. He turns his head, not so that he does not have to look at Edwin but so that he can brush his lips across the side of Edwin's wrist, just at the end of his sleeve. "I would," he says, and it is the truth. He would. If he were a different man, if he had different goals, Edwin would be the first ally he would want.

They lean towards each other at more or less the same time, though it is less chance and more that they know each other too well; Edwin's hand curls about the back of Mathias' neck as their lips meet, threading up into the short-cropped hair at his nape and pulling him closer. It's a kiss as much of teeth as it is of tongues and by the time they break apart, breathing quickly, their mouths are both bitten red. Edwin's fingers are still almost painfully tight in his hair, his eyes narrowed as he studies Mathias' face; he licks his lips, a flicker of tongue as if to taste Mathias on his skin.

Mathias lets himself moan softly, feels the impact of the sound in the tension of Edwin's hand, in the hitch of his breath; when he leans back onto the bed Edwin comes with him, sliding gracefully down atop him, knees braced against the bed to take some of his weight.

"Am I due this, too?" Edwin whispers against his mouth, so close that their lips brush again, so close that they breathe the same warm air. "Is this how you'll pay me, Mathias Shaw?" His hand, the one that's not still around the back of Mathias' neck, moves from the bed to the buckle of Mathias' broad leather belt and works at it deftly. "Is this how you pay all your men?"

"What if it is?" Mathias says, although it certainly is not, and on a whim traces the earlier path of Edwin's tongue with his own.

Edwin curses but does not fumble; the belt is drawn from the loops and cast aside in a second's more work and then Edwin is dealing one handed with his buttons and pulling his head almost violently up for another kiss. 

Mathias goes willingly, his hands rising from the bed to stroke along Edwin's sides, dipping below his shirt and back up over the smooth flat muscle. When he feels the last of his buttons go he arches up off of the bed so that Edwin can wrestle his trousers down around his knees; it knocks their hips together and this time it is Edwin who makes a choked quiet noise. "Take them off," he says, and Mathias obediently slips his hands down over Edwin's stomach and undoes his buttons in turn. The cloth is easier to shove down than his leathers had been and within seconds Edwin has him pinned flat again, his cock sliding sweetly against Mathias'.

"Edwin," Mathias says, and Edwin bucks against him, a short jerk of his hips that presses their bellies still closer together, that turns into a slow, even rhythm before Mathias can decide whether it had been intentional or not. He spreads his thighs as wide as he can with the hobble of his trousers, thrusts back up at him, and infuriatingly Edwin slows down. 

"Light," he says with a certain amount of exasperation, his hands coming up to Edwin's back, stroking the jutting shoulderblades, the tense planes, the dip of his spine. Edwin ducks his head, catching Mathias under the chin and kissing at the underside of his jaw, biting into his throat above the collar of his armor, _laughing_ as he goes. "You're going to make me work for this, aren't you."

A particularly sharp bite punctuated with a quicker thrust has his hands gripping in Edwin's shirt nearly hard enough to tear the cloth, his nails scratching over his back below it; he won't be the only one with marks from this. He makes a soft sound at the sensation, at the thought, and Edwin echoes it, says "Always."

He laughs too, unable to stop it, and Edwin rewards him - it is quite obviously a reward - with a slightly faster but still distinctly teasing pace. It's smoother now, precome slicking their bellies just enough to ease the drag of skin on skin. Mathias loosens his grasp, turns his hands to long, encouraging strokes again, at last settling them on Edwin's narrow ass and trying to bodily pull him along faster.

Edwin's grin is tangible against his throat; he sucks his way up to Mathias' ear, nips at his lobe, says "Ask me nicely, Mathias."

"I am," Mathias retorts, twisting his hips a bit on the next thrust so that his cock rubs harder against Edwin's.

"Hell," Edwin says under his breath, a half-swallowed whisper that Mathias thinks he probably wasn't meant to hear. He's tense under Mathias' hands with the effort of holding back now; Mathias bucks up against him again harder, holding him close, and feels him shudder. When Edwin swallows harshly, he can hear it. "Ask me," he says again.

If he kept going, if he held out a little longer, Edwin would break; his control is slipping already, he is not as practiced-- "Please," he says, "Edwin, please."

"Yes," Edwin breathes, and then they are both thrusting frantically, rocking together in an uneven harsh desperation that has each panting as loudly as the other. "Mathias--" he says, and "--always," in a strange voice that's almost a promise, that rings with too much truth.

It takes him by surprise, shocking through him with a jolt that's almost as physical as the slide of their bodies; before he can open his mouth again, before he can think of a reply he is coming between them, gasping wordlessly. Edwin shoves against him once more, pushing him down into the bed with bruising force, his cock sliding through the mess of Mathias' come, and then buries his face into Mathias' shoulder as he jerks convulsively against him.

They lie like that for long minutes, until their breathing evens and tense muscles begin to relax; Edwin finally rolls off of him and grabs for the corner of a sheet to clean himself off. Mathias closes his eyes for a moment and stretches out the remainder of his tension before following Edwin's lead. By the time he's finished, Edwin is dressed and watching him with a certain amount of sated amusement. Mathias raises an eyebrow and pulls up his own pants; Edwin tosses him his discarded belt.

"I've got a lot to do," he says. If there had been any sentimentality before, if he hadn't been imagining things, it's gone now, or at least well hidden. "I suppose you'll want results as soon as I can get them, with an advance payment like that." Edwin smirks - whether it's aimed at himself or at Mathias, he can't tell - and turns to go.

"Wait," Mathias says.

Edwin, hand on the doorknob, stops and looks back. His eyes are already distant; his mind clearly a thousand miles from Stormwind, buried in blueprints and plans that Mathias knows he wouldn't have half a chance in hell of following even if Edwin was willing to share his secrets.

"Edwin," he says, and waits until he focuses on him, waits until he gets that almost-irritated little eyebrow quirk. "Should you be discovered..."

"You won't know me?"

Mathias can't hold back the whole of his smile. That's a lie he's not sure anyone would believe, even from him. "Don't get caught."


End file.
